Snow likes to think he broke them. Broke his precious little pets. Beat them into submission. Yet they were waiting. Biding their time for a spark with enough power to light the fire. Rowell had potential, but not enough. Katniss had it.
Theo is fi...
Warning for this chapter; character mentions wanting to die.
Rowell was caged, caged like a feral animal. Electrocuted metal bars around the cell, children were brought in and regularly shot to make a scene, to get a reaction. This has been her life since she refused to cooperate with Snow on his broadcast. No longer is she excluded from physical pain or any mental torture that the others faced during their stay in the Capital prison.
It is ironic that ''stay'' was what this was called. What others referred to this experience as. The cell guards always said that their stay was temporary if they cooperated. This was a stay in less-than-ideal circumstances due to their actions.
Rowell supposed it made sense, especially how the capital always refuses to see things at face value. The horrors of the games, the actual treatment of those suffering in the Districts, the Capital citizens choose to ignore the pain and blight of those they deem lower class and below them.
Rowell is irritated with everything, ready to snap. Not break, mind, that is an important distinction. She would never break again if she could help it, not after the last time she did. Watching her entire cell filled with children, dead children. That took away a tiny part of her mental stability, which is understandable. Yet watching Theo suffer for her actions is significantly worse. Or at least in her book, it is, watching her oldest and closest friend suffer through the pain he should have never experienced. None of them should have.
Yet this was their life, left in this prison's darkest, dampest cells, forgotten, aside from a few hours each day when they are dragged out to listen to each other's screams, letting them haunt their nightmares.
There was only one thing she could do to stop her from breaking. She wants to end this whole thing as depressing as she thinks it is. End her life. Seeing as Snow didn't want to do so, she must force his hand.
She was up against Men, clothes form-fitting, and guns unused but trigger-ready soldiers. The kind of gun that, once the trigger is pulled, the weapon will keep firing. Her aim was to draw fire away from her cellmates. Giving them a chance to get out and follow their plan.
Rowell could do a lot. Dodging bullets is different from the skills she ever attained. Knives? Easily. Spears? Deffently. Bullets; no chance.
If Rowell somehow made it past the armed guards by a pure mixture of madness and luck (or madness and a miracle), the area has locked doors and coded locks to contend with. As well as reaching the switch to allow the other Victors out of their cells. So that they have their chance.
The updated ones only respond to DNA or a long string of numbers. Neither of which belongs in her current possession. The only thing she had done beforehand was learn the area's layout every time she had been allowed out of her cell and walked somewhere, committing it all to memory.
This being necessary for a feasible plan to escape.
Except she doesn't want to be free. Or not in the way that will be accomplished through leaving this prison. All she needs to do is draw Snow's interest enough that he doesn't see the actual happenings of the plan.
She wanted to force his hand. She wanted him to kill her. Rowell no longer cared, seeing so many children die in her cell; she left there for minutes to days, watching their corpses rot and decay, turning colours she never wanted to see.
Even in the games, Snow had the decency to remove the bodies before anything happened to them before the effects of time destroyed the façade of a "game".
No, Rowell was done. Tired.
If Snow wouldn't end it, she would.
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